The fellowship found in our journey to recovery can lead to friendships like none we've ever experienced before. Yet we still can be very reluctant to let go of friendships we had before getting into recovery out of a sense of obligation. What helped to separate myself from my drinking and drugging friendships were two things. First I had to do it out of an obligation to myself, to give myself any real chance to be able to stop drinking and drugging. Secondly, I was told that somewhere along my way in recovery I was going to meet some of these people again, and would know them as a true friend for the first time. Because we were now both part of this fellowship we had found on our own different paths to recovery.